Optional Libraries

This page lists programs that are not included in the XEmacs
distribution, but which are either used by various packages that are
in the distribution or are enhancements which can be compiled into
XEmacs. Where available, ftp sites, web home pages, and configure flags
(although you should never have to specify library configure flags
since they are autodetected) are indicated below.

Most of the files listed below contain the sources to these programs,
and you will have to build them yourself. However, some binaries are
available for the Win32 (i.e. native Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP), Cygwin and
MinGW platforms.

The win32
directory contains binaries for common graphics libraries needed for
building XEmacs and for zlib, needed to support the PNG library.
We recommend that you run
optional-libs.exe, a self-extracting executable, which will
install pre-built binaries for all of the optional graphics libraries
needed by XEmacs, in the correct hierarchy as expected by XEmacs.
Then just set the OPTIONAL_LIBRARY_DIR parameter to the
appropriate directory in which you installed the libraries (by default,
c:\src).

We no longer provide binaries for CVS, SSH or patch. If you want these,
just install Cygwin, which provides
versions of these and all other common Unix utilities, has an easy
install program, and is frequently updated.

Cygwin is a POSIX emulation environment for MS
Windows. Development on Cygwin is quite active. Nearly every major or
even semi-significant open-source Unix package on earth has been ported
to Cygwin and is available in pre-built format from the Cygwin website.
If you are planning on doing any development on XEmacs under Windows
it's pretty much mandatory to install Cygwin. Among other things, you
will undoubtedly need ssh and CVS, and GNU make as well if you want to
rebuild the XEmacs packages or the web site.

Get Cygwin from http://www.cygwin.com/
. (You will be asked to choose a mirror site; try
mirrors.rcn.net.) Part of the setup process allows you to install
XFree86. Other useful packages to consider are CVS (for access to the
XEmacs source tree), ssh (needed in conjunction with CVS), make (for
building the packages or the web site), gcc (for compiling XEmacs under
Cygwin), png/zlib/Xpm/jpeg/tiff/compface libraries (see below), various
other libraries (see below; prebuilt versions of most of them exist),
autoconf (for rebuilding configure), TeX (for rebuilding
certain parts of the package hierarchy), and wget (for rebuilding the
web site).

Get MinGW from http://www.mingw.org/.
(MinGW is a version of GCC that uses
native Microsoft DLL's instead of requiring a POSIX-emulation DLL,
as Cygwin does.)

The mingw
directory contains binaries for the graphics libraries (Xpm, png+zlib,
jpeg, tiff, compface -- remember that gif support is built in) needed
for building XEmacs using the MinGW compiler. NOTE:
Many of the binaries are out-of-date. Compile
them yourself if possible.

The ZLIB compression library (strongly
encouraged when building XEmacs) is used by the PNG library.
A GZIP coding system is also available, in XEmacs 21.5 and onward.zlib-1.2.1.tar.gzhttp://www.gzip.org/zlib/
configure flag: --with-zlib

OpenMotif is the free release of Motif, a standard widget
set for X Windows.openmotif2.1.30pl5.tar.gzhttp://www.opengroup.org/openmotif/
configure flag: --with-scrollbars=motif,--with-dialogs=motif,--with-widgets=motif,--with-xim=motif
(We don't currently recommend compiling with Motif menubars,
as they are probably broken. They were broken awhile ago and no one has
tried to fix them.)

LessTif is a library that is compatible with Motif, dating back from the days before Motif was free and still actively developed.lesstif-0.94.0.tar.gzhttp://www.lesstif.org/
configure flag: --with-scrollbars=motif,--with-dialogs=motif,--with-widgets=motif
(Same caveats apply for menubars as with OpenMotif. Also LessTif didn't use
to work with XIM; this may have changed.)

mlterm is a multi-lingual terminal emulator with
special support for Asian languages with large character sets.
There are other similar programs (e.g. xiterm), but this one appears
to be the most actively maintained.mlterm-2.9.1.tar.gzhttp://mlterm.sourceforge.net/